HC Gilje: Vision in Motion

In vision in motion – art of living on a damaged planet HC Gilje shows a series of videos that explore humans effect and place in the world. Plastic, the ocean and the forest are approached from unconventional perspectives with the help of a microscope, a rotating camera and the laser scanning technique LIDAR. Each tool has been modified or custom built with a singular motion in mind – verticality, rotation and orbit.

It takes a Styrofoam cup around 500 years to biodegrade. Particles and fragments from the cup will spread through living organisms, food chains and the ocean long after the user of the cup has ceased living. In the animation rift 2 (2017) over 10 000 stills of plastic are shown from a microscope perspective in vertically flickering sequence. The textures are indicative of the geological timescale that plastics are part of – refined from oil that came into being over several hundred million years. The piece was originally made on 35mm Cinemascope and takes inspiration from the hand painted and colourful animation films that Len Lye made in the 1930s. With a soundtrack by Justin Bennett.

Barents (mare incognitum) (2015) is a slowly rotating and undisturbed view of the Barents Sea recorded close to the oceanic border between Norway and Russia. In 2015 Norway moved the Arctic sea ice border further north, thereby allowing for oil exploration in the region. The disconnect between the Barents Sea as a coherent ecosystem and man-made borders is problematized. Like plastics the ocean operates on a different time scale than humans – the ocean was around long before oil exploration began and will still be there long after such practices have ended.

Rift and Barents (mare incognitum) were commissioned by the artistic research project Dark Ecology.

In Entagled (2018) Gilje has used the laser scanning technique LIDAR to create a cast of himself in the forest – a frozen moment orbited by a virtual camera. The white dots which outline the figure and terrain are enveloped in endless black. The perspective is unbound by the body, the eye or a physical camera, reminding us that humans can only directly sense a small part of the world at any given moment.

vision in motion – art of living on a damaged planet is a critical exploration of how humans have changed and partitioned the planet, through durations and scales that aren’t directly available to our sensory apparatus.

HC Gilje works with installation, performance and experimental video. Over the last ten years Gilje has explored how ephemeral media – sound, projections, light and movement – can change and activate a room. Recent solo shows include Rake Visningsrom (2016), Kristiansand Kunsthall (2016) and Woodstreet Galleries in Pittsburgh (2015 and 2012). Gilje is a long-time participant in the international festival scene – his work has been shown during Lofoten International Art Festival (2013) and Sonic Acts in Amsterdam (2010, 2013 and 2017). He has participated in Dark Ecology which took place on both sides of the border between Norway and Russia (2014-2016) as well as a large number of group shows including shows at ZKM i Karlsruhe (2013) and The Museum of Contemporary Art in Roskilde (2008 and 2010).